Video: Rotating images on their sides

In this exercise, I'm going to show you how to rotate an image that comes in on its side, and this is a less common occurrence than it used to be. But it still happens with inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras. The idea is that your everyday, average, rinky-dink camera treats every image as if it's horizontal. So if you turn the camera and take a vertical portrait shot, it comes in on its side as we're about to see. It does happen, however, sometimes with more expensive SLRs, too. They can get confused, depending on the angle of your shot. So I'm still looking at the contents of the 03_open_org folder as I will throughout this chapter.

Photoshop is the world’s most powerful image editor, and it’s arguably the most complex, as well. Fortunately, nobody knows the program like award-winning book and video author Deke McClelland. Join Deke as he explores such indispensable Photoshop features as resolution, cropping, color correction, retouching, and layers. Gain expertise with real-world projects that make sense. Exercise files accompany the course.

Rotating images on their sides

In this exercise, I'm going to show you how to rotate an image that comes in onits side, and this is a less common occurrence than it used to be.But it still happens with inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras.The idea is that your everyday, average, rinky-dink camera treats every imageas if it's horizontal.So if you turn the camera and take a vertical portrait shot, it comes in on itsside as we're about to see.It does happen, however, sometimes with more expensive SLRs, too.They can get confused, depending on the angle of your shot.So I'm still looking at the contents of the 03_open_org folder as I willthroughout this chapter.

And, what I want you to do if you're working along with me, is press the A key, andwhat that's going to do is it's going to take you down to the first file thatstarts with the letter A, which happens to be this group of images when we'relooking at them in reverse alpha order, this group of images that shows Sammy as a goalie.And there's this image right there of Max with a face mask on that is on its side.So I'm going to click on this first image that's upright here,that's shot properly.We'll see that this image, if I bring up my Metadata panel here, which shouldbe onscreen by default, what I recommend you do is twirl c lose File Properties,make sure that IPTC Core is twirled closed as well, and drop down here to your Camera Data.

And towards the bottom of the Camera Data, we can see that this was shot with anOlympus S410, which is an older model point-and-shoot camera.So no surprise that it thinks that every image ought to be horizontal.However, what we can't see at this point is the orientation, and that's one ofthe bits of information that is captured along with Exif.Now, Exif incidentally is a group of metadata that is captured by your digital camera.So the moment you press the shutter release, all kinds of information is captured.

This includes the aperture value, the focal link, whether the flash fired or not,all kinds of good stuff.But we're not seeing orientation for some reason.So I'll go up here for the Metadata flyout menu icon, click on it, and I willchoose the Preferences command.And that will bring up the Metadata panel of the Preferences dialog box, and I'mgoing to twirl close File Properties and twirl close IPTC Legacy, and then twirlclose IPTC Core, and IPTC Extension until I get down to Camera Data Exif.Otherwise, I'm going to have to scroll down this list like crazy.

And I still have to scroll down, and I am doing this using the scroll wheel on my mouse.Notice right below Metering Mode and right above Exif Color Space is this optionright there called Orientation.Go ahead and click on it to turn it on and then click OK, and you'll now see anew Orientation option right below Metering Mode inside of this list.And we can see that both of these images have an orientation of normal. Interesting.This guy though is obviously not right, and we need to rotate it, and you can dothat by using one of these two Rotate icons in the upper-right corner of thescreen, either rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise, which would be a leftrotation, or 90 degrees clockwise, which would be a right rotation, or at leastwhat we think of this being left and right, which is why you have keyboardshortcuts, incidentally.

You can press the Ctrl key here on the PC or the Cmd key on the Mac alongwith one of the Square Bracket keys, those being the keys just to the right ofthe P as in Paul key on an American keyboard.So if I press Ctrl+Right Bracket or Cmd+Right Bracket on the Mac, I'm goingto go the wrong direction, and we can see that the Orientation is now 90degrees, rotated 90 degrees.If I press Ctrl+Left Bracket or Cmd+Left Bracket on the Mac, I'll restorethe normal Orientation.What I really want is another press of Ctrl+Left Bracket or Cmd+Left Bracketon the Mac so that we have an up right Max that's rotated negative 90 degrees.

And that is merely a change to the metadata.We have not changed the file at all.So we did not have to rewrite this JPEG file.It's the same file it ever was.It just has a little bit of extra metadata inside of it now, which will tellPhotoshop to rotate the image when it opens up.It'll also tell other applications that recognize this kind of metadata torotate the image as well.Some applications are not that smart, particularly if you're viewing the imageat the operating system level.You may not see it rotated.It may still be on its side.

Don't fret about it. It doesn't matter.Photoshop will be aware, and that's what counts. All right.I'm going to go back to the top of my list because I want to show youanother way to work.And another problem that might occur. Now notice these two towers that I shot in Seattle.They're the exact same tower of course, and the orientation for both of them is normal,notice that, Normal and Normal.And I shot this image with Leica D-LUX 3, which is capable of rotating theimage automatically.It just got confused in the case of this tower.So I need to go ahead and fix it.Well, here's another way to work.

If you're working inside of the Full- Screen Preview mode, which I'm gettingby pressing the spacebar as you might recall, this guy is in great shape, so no problems there.I will press the Left Arrow key in order to go back to this tower. It's at an angle.This is why keyboard shortcuts are so important in the Bridge.I can re-orient this image using that same keyboard shortcut I showed you amoment ago, except without the modifier key.So you don't need to press Ctrl or Cmd.You just press the Right Bracket key to rotate the image clockwise or theLeft Bracket key to rotate it counterclockwise.

I want clockwise, so I'll press the Right Bracket key. I'll Escape out.And it looks beautiful now, and you can see that the Orientation is rotated 90 degrees.Again, that's just a little tag that's added to the file, that Bridge do nothave to re-write any of the pixels inside the image.And that's how you re-orient photographs that come in on their side here insidethe Bridge.

Q: While following along to the tutorial, my copy of Bridge does not have the same Export options as shown in the video. Why are these options missing in my copy?

A: For some reason, Bridge CS5 shipped without the Export options. They were included when Bridge updated to version 4.0.1. Updating Bridge will restore the export options.

Q: While following along with the exercises, next to the background layer on my Layers panel \, it shows a brush instead of the small picture, as it does in the video. What can I do to fix this? I erased the exercise files and started over, but it still shows the paintbrush.

A: This will occur if the Layers panel preview is turned off. To fix this, right-click in the empty gray area below the Background layer. Then choose Large Thumbnails. The thumbnail previews should come back immediately.

Q: The instructions for installing the dekeKeys don't work on my computer (which is running Mac OS X Lion). Is there an update to these?

A: The dekeKeys distributed with this course will still work for Lion. You just need to add them to a slightly different folder than in previous versions of OS X.

Open a new Finder window and choose Go > Go to Folder. Type the following file path exactly as written below. Copying and pasting may result in an error.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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